Millions of people in dozens of states have received the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine with few reports of ill effects, and its prior testing in tens of thousands of individuals found it to be safe.
But recently, blood clots and abnormal bleeding during a small number of vaccine recipients in European countries have cast doubt on its safety, although no causative link has been found between the patients’ conditions and therefore the vaccine. The reports have prompted quite a dozen countries to either partly or fully suspend the vaccine’s use while the cases are investigated. Most of the nations said they were doing so as a precaution until leading health agencies could review the cases.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has not been authorized to be used yet within the u. s., although a review of its U.S. trial is predicted soon.
What kinds of problems caused the countries to require precautionary steps?
The cascade of choices to pause the utilization of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, mainly by European countries, followed reports of 4 serious cases in Norway, which were described among doctors under age 50 who received the vaccine. Most developed clots or bleeding abnormalities and had low platelet counts, health authorities there said. Two of them have died from brain hemorrhages, and therefore the other two are hospitalized. The death of a 60-year-old woman in Denmark and of a 57-year-old man in Italy also fueled quick decisions, although none of the deaths are fully investigated to see whether there's any link to the shots they received.
What is a grume and what causes them generally?
A grume could be a thickened, gelatinous blob of blood that may block circulation. Clots form in response to injuries and might even be caused by many illnesses, including cancer and genetic disorders, certain drugs and prolonged sitting or bed rest. Clots that form within the legs sometimes break off and jaunt the lungs or brain, where they'll be deadly.
Can the vaccine cause blood clots?
Vaccines haven't been shown to cause blood clots, said Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University.
Blood clots are common within the general population, and health authorities suspect that the cases reported in vaccine recipients are possibly coincidental and not associated with the vaccination.
“There are lots of causes of blood coagulation, lots of predisposing factors, and lots of individuals who are at increased risk — and these are often also the those that are being vaccinated immediately,” said Mark Slifka, a vaccine researcher at Oregon Health and Science University.
From 300,000 to 600,000 people a year within the u. s. develop blood clots within their lungs or in veins in the legs or other parts of the body, consistent with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Based on that data, about 1,000 to 2,000 blood clots occur within the U.S. population daily, per Dr. Stephan Moll, a hematologist and professor of medication at the University of North Carolina.
“The u. s. has 253 million adults,” Dr. Moll said. “So, if each day 2.3 million people within the us get Covid-vaccinated, meaning about 1 percent of the adult population gets vaccinated each day.”
Calculating further, he said, roughly 1 percent of the 1,000 to 2,000 daily blood clots — 10 to twenty on a daily basis — would occur within the vaccinated patients even as a part of the conventional background rates, not associated with the vaccine.
“Only if epidemiological data show that that rate is higher, would one start to wonder a couple of causative relationship,” Dr. Moll said.
